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The outfits worn with knickers seem to be amost all suits, eithr regular suits or school uniforms. For somereason quite a number of private schools (the elite boarding schools called public schools). This included boys older than the state schools which were mostly priary schools. Many of these public schools adopted knickers as the uniform for the younger boys in tWe rarely see boys wearing knickers wiyhouta suit jackets. This was th case in both the 19th and early-20th century. Of course, during the 19th century, virtually all of the photography was studio photography. This was not the case after the turn-of-the 20th century century with the apperarance of the snapshot. Knickers were still worn in the early-20th century, but largely disappeared after World War I in the 1920s, at least for boys. But before this we almost always see knickers beig worn with suits, at least in the photoraphic record which is our primary source of information. This may not perfectly reflect actual trends, but we uspet it was a fairly good indicator.
English boys commonly wore knickers as parts of suits. And we see Eton collars commonly being worn with these suits. Many schools required them. Good exampes are George and Ewan McTherson in 1902.
We see English boys wearing different styles of suit jackets with knickers, but single breasted suit jackets were very common. Our archive is still very limited, but single-breasted suits seem by far the most common, more common than in America where we see many boys wearing double-breasted jackets. We believe the popularity of single-breasted jackets was in part because that this was in part because it was the the style generally preferred for school uniforms. This meant primarily private schools, but styles at these schools was influential in setting popular styles. Norfolk jackers were another popular style. As far as we can tell, knickers were mostly suit pants. I don't think it was very common, as it was in America, to just buy a pair of knickers separate from a suit coat.
English boys mostly wore knickers with long stockings or knee socks. This is often very difficut to tell from the photographic record.
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